be the one that saves me
by Lady Shaye
Summary: She just tells him, "It's okay." Because that's what they're supposed to say to each other, even though it isn't okay, it hasn't been for a long freaking time, and she still can't breathe so thank goodness she doesn't physically have to. / Damon and Caroline, with a side of Stefan, on the path to being okay again. Maybe they can save each other.
1. be the one that saves me

Author's Note: So, um, because I am a writing _machine _lately, I'm giving y'all a present. (Ew, did I just say "y'all"? Ahhh, my southern roots are showing!) It will have more chapters, but maybe not for a bit, because I'm getting consumed with my zombie story. That, and VD Season Three just decided to pop up on Netflix, and I'm having a field day - night, whatever - here. Ain't nobody gonna rain on my parade. :)

Disclaimer: Owning Vampire Diaries would make me rich. I am not rich. Therefore, I do not own Vampire Diaries. _Voila_.

Summary: She just tells him, "It's okay." Because that's what they're supposed to say to each other, even though it isn't okay, it hasn't been for a long freaking time, and she still can't breathe so thank goodness she doesn't physically have to. / Damon and Caroline, on the path to being okay again. Maybe they can save each other.

* * *

be the one that saves me – Oasis, "Wonderwall"

* * *

The phone rings and her hands are shaking and she can't breathe and she never thought being undead could _hurt_ this much without a stake in her.

It rings and rings and rings.

It takes three calls before he picks up.

There's the sound of faint distant shouting (she hears it like she's next to it, and she knows it's Damon, yelling nonsensically) and the noise of someone throwing a tumbler of alcohol into the fireplace. (She knows Damon, knows his habits, prays that he's angry and sad over something else.)

Thank God, Stefan answers. She doesn't think she could deal with Damon's grief right now. (Please God, don't let it be true, let him be grieving over something else.)

"This is the Salvatore residence."

She swallows in relief. "St—Stefan?"

There's a pause.

"…Caroline?" He seems unsure of himself, like if he's wrong it will only hurt him (more).

"Yeah." She swallows, laughs a little bit but it's a hysterical kind of laughter. "Yeah. It's me."

Unsure of how to react, there's a distance over the phone. "Oh."

"Can I—can I just please talk to Elena?" She hears his breath catch, but she hurries on before he can destroy her half-there hopes after all. "I've just heard the most terrible lie from Klaus and I need a little bit of reassurance, is all. So may I please speak to Elena?"

Stefan laughs, dry and brittle and maybe to hide the sound of tears. "I—" he chokes. "I don't know what he told you. But whatever he said—"

"He said that Elena was dead, Stefan. That she died four days ago."

"—he was right."

And right there, her hopes are gone, crushed by Stefan's blankness. As though he doesn't care about her reaction. As though he can't.

("Damon, please, calm down," she hears Stefan frantically saying over the phone. "I know, I know it hurts, but please—please, Damon, stop it. Please calm down. I promise, we can do this later. I'm on the phone, please, Damon, come on!")

The yelling ceases—momentarily, she suspects—andhe returns to the phone. "I'm sorry. Damon's been a bit—inconsolable. I've been making sure he survives. And I don't know who's been handling it better—him or me." He laughs again, dry and humorless and just a little bit frightening. "I—I've been making sure he doesn't go off himself or something equally dramatic and just like Damon. I…haven't had the chance to try to find you, to tell you. I'm sorry."

"I really didn't give you much of a choice, did I?" she asks sadly. "I left, I didn't say goodbye with anything except a note in Bonnie's room, I never contacted any of you."

"How did you get this number?" he asks, suddenly curious.

"I've had it, memorized it," she says. "I…I'm sorry. I just never thought to call. When I left, everything was so fucked up. I thought you'd be better off without me and Tyler. When we left, everything was so…wrong. So I left my number in Bonnie's contacts. Why didn't she tell you how to call me?"

A moment of dreadful silence.

"We generally don't go searching through the phone contacts of the dead," he finally says, slowly and cruelly (maybe that's just her but it seems so, anyway). "I'm sorry, Caroline. Bonnie died three months after you left—she died to save Elena." He laughs again, just as bitterly as all the times before. "Didn't do much good, she only kept Elena alive for five years. She should have had for_ever_."

What is this, pile-the-bad-news-on-Caroline day or something?

This isn't right. Elena should be alive, Bonnie should be too, and Tyler…

"Where's Tyler?" Stefan asks, like a mind-reader. "He should be with you right now, helping you feel better."

She swallows again, thickly, to avoid the lump growing in her throat for the _millionth_ time. "He died two years ago. We were in—we were in Chicago and apparently there was a pack of angry werewolves there, just aching for a fight. They scented me and…Tyler defended me. I couldn't save him, but I did make…I made damn sure that they paid." _In blood_, she doesn't add, but then, she doesn't need to. They both hear the unspoken words echoing over the line.

"Why didn't you just come home then?"

"I felt like I had to keep running, for Tyler." She swallows down bitter, tender, hurting memory: Tyler's face throbbing in her mind to the beat of what once was his heartbeat (she learned it by heart three years ago, falling asleep with her ear directly above his heart). "For him, for what we were to each other."

Stefan pauses. "Oh. I—I didn't know. I'm sorry."

She cracks an emotionless grin. This is her and Stefan—they've both lost so much, only just now finding out about each other—and all that they can do is smile and hope that the other can't tell over the phone. Strange how much your lives can change after only five years with no contact. She sits on the bed of her hotel room; phone tucked between her ear and shoulder as she crosses her arms over her legs and buries her chin in her knees.

She doesn't tell him how she held Tyler with his dying breath, or how they never got married even though they always talked about it, or how the last time they fucked—_made love_—he brushed her hair behind her ear and told her that he loved her in the quietest, sweetest voice Tyler had ever used with her, with anyone (because he was only ever gentle with her, and she liked him that way and never betrayed that part of him and so he trusted her with his secret soft side and no one else).

She doesn't tell him how she buried Tyler just a few miles outside of Mystic Falls, as close as they could possibly get, or how she went back to her hotel room in Chicago and cried on the bed, breathing in the smell of him and his smooth, silky hair (you'd think it'd be rougher or stiffer or crunchier maybe but Tyler was so damn full of sweet, happy surprises, all the time, even in fucking death) and his warm, clean skin. She doesn't tell him how she survived after losing the love of her unnatural life—alone. And that she didn't survive it well, and she still isn't surviving it well—as well as one would expect from her, anyway, because fucking stupid people for some reason are always calling her strong. (Tyler was strong.)

She doesn't tell him that she still dreams at night of Tyler's warm encircling arms, pulling her back up against his chest as he breathes words of love into her ear. Or how the dream switches to a nightmare, of his death—every single freaking night.

She doesn't tell him she ripped those goddamn werewolves fucking _apart_—or that she's still firmly convinced that they deserved it. Or that they begged for mercy. And that she never gave it. Or that she is afraid of herself now. And that she thinks Tyler might have been, too, if he could see her this way.

She just tells him, "It's okay." Because that's what they're supposed to say to each other, even though it isn't okay, it hasn't been for a long fucking time, and she still can't breathe so thank goodness she doesn't physically have to.

But then her breath catches—who knew, she's been breathing all along after all—and she's holding back tears that she hasn't had to fight for a long time, only because there hasn't been that much left in her lately to let her cry. "Stefan?" she asks, and her throat hurts and she could swear vampires aren't supposed to get migraines or permanently red-rimmed eyes but she has them all the time now and her eyes won't go back to non-swollen normal. "I…"

"What?" he wants to know, and he maybe he's trying not to cry too, because his voice is wavering and she knows he's doing that thing where he mashes his lips together and tries to look nonchalant and instead looks like a person trying not to tell a secret. (Five years, and she still knows everybody's habits.)

And God knows what Damon is doing. Maybe just because she doesn't care, she doesn't ask. (But she does care, and maybe that's what scares her, is that she cares about Damon.) But that's not the question she needs the answer to right now.

"Can I—can I come home?" she asks hesitantly, breathless all over again.

He lets out a little surprised rumble in his chest that might have once been a laugh but now only serves as a reminder of him laughing at one of Elena's bad jokes or sleep-ruffled hair (Caroline was at the boardinghouse most mornings, and sometimes she saw what should have been just between Elena and Stefan). Then there's a moment of silence, like he's contemplating it, except she can hear him shushing Damon, who's starting yelling again about doe eyes and deception and fuck the world for making him feel like this.

Then he returns to the phone, and she doesn't know what to say, only knows that she needs to come home, needs to talk to him and even see Damon and see Bonnie's grave and whatever burial Elena was given, and she needs to visit Tyler's grave that she made with her own two hands two years ago just before dawn (and she thought about taking her ring off but that wouldn't be fair to him, to him that gave his life for her, just for her to end it).

Too many goddamn graves, and she's not even thirty. (Physically, she will never reach thirty. So why does she feel like she's a million years old?)

"Can I come home? Please?" she breathes out, repeating like a dial tone, and she's suddenly furiously, desperately afraid that he will hang up and she will never know if she's welcome or not. And then she will be too scared to try to come back.

"Of course you can," he says.

She's going home.

She doesn't even realize it when she breathes a sigh of relief. She only knows that she does a few seconds later, and that life cannot possibly get any worse, can it?

(Isn't that what everybody in the books and movies say, right before their lives get worse? She ignores that thought.)

"Can you—" she hears the sound of a scuffle for a few moments, like Stefan is wrestling with Damon, and then Stefan returns to the phone "—could you maybe bring some bourbon? We're gonna run out pretty soon, and I don't want to unleash Damon on the Grille. And he needs some bourbon." He chuckles, tonelessly. "I do, too."

Maybe, he means, he just doesn't want to leave the house himself. Leave the place where Elena lived (and maybe died too, she doesn't know all the details) and slept with him and kissed Damon and did all those things that made things the way that they were—and the way that they are.

Either way, she knows this is something she has to do. Whether it's bourbon or murder or even just crying at the foot of a grave, she has to make up for leaving. For never properly saying goodbye to Elena, for never checking up on Bonnie, for never telling anyone about Tyler's death. For never letting herself miss any of them, for fear she'd just run right back home.

(But if she had, she would have discovered Bonnie being dead sooner, and maybe she would have been able to protect Elena, be it with her life or anything else necessary.)

For never saving any of them.

This is her job now, because if she couldn't save any of the three people she loved the most (other than her mother, and she prays to God that nothing has happened to Liz), then she must save the only two people that she has left, possibly: Damon and Stefan Salvatore.

One that she loved helplessly when she was young (she's eternal now, and that makes her old in these circumstances, she thinks) and human (and bleeding from his bites) and stupid and naïve, and one that she befriended when she wasn't quite so young and not at all human (still trying to hold on, though) and just a little bit smarter but still tons naïve.

"Of course," she says. "Does he prefer a certain year?"

* * *

Author's Note: So, been writing that for a while. Actually, I kinda wrote it all in one go. Then my computer deleted it. Then I rewrote it from memory, and believe me, this version is most definitely _not_ as good. I liked my other one better, I think, though I can't remember all of it. Anyway. Not the point. I hoped you liked it. :)


	2. come home, save me

Disclaimer: The love of my life is, and will be for the foreseeable future, Daroline. However, if I owned it, I wouldn't have to post my random thoughts at an ungodly hour on a fanfiction website. So, no, do not own. Let me go off and cry in peace over that. Thank you very much.

A/N: So, have the second chapter up sooner than I expected, because I kinda sorta wanted to write the fifteen bajillion _other_ things in my head first, but whatever. And it's also up later than I expected, in a strictly humorous sense, because it's _two o'clock in the bloody morning_ and if I were a vampire I'd be ready to rip someone's head off. Argh.

Also, warnings: deep Forwood angst, a little dark!Caroline, awesome!charming!cocky!Klaus, depressing!Stefan (did you expect anything different, my loves), and absolutely WAY too many flashbacks. But I couldn't resist, on any of them. So. :)

Rating's still T, pairing will still eventually be Daroline, and if you wouldn't miss Elena then please disregard the angst that is to follow.

Enjoy.

* * *

_come home, save me_

—Ron Keating, "Solitary Song"

* * *

Her hands are too shaky and she doesn't think that she can drive all the way from New York to Mystic Falls, so she gets a plane ride instead. The flight is only an hour, an hour and a half at the most, but it might give her a little time to think anyway so she just cradles the bottle of bourbon she sneaked in and thinks about this. What her life has become.

An Asian girl, early twenties and loud, chats to a friend on the phone, sitting across the aisle from her. Nonchalant, casual, not knowing that your whole life can change in just one split second on the phone. Naïve. The man beside Caroline, forty or fifty and graying and nervous, gives her an unsteady smile, and she suspects that he's afraid of flights. (She's gotten a lot better at reading people; you don't have to use compulsion as much when you know how to persuade someone into getting you what you want. And she's all about the moral police, isn't she.)

She returns the smile as best she can (she's probably offering him a wobbly one, too) and grips the edges of her seat, staring vacantly ahead and trying to forget.

All that comes up is her well of memories, and damn, won't she drown already. She's flailing and she should remember how to swim, but goddamn she's an immortal so it doesn't really matter in the end anyways. Why won't she fucking _drown_? There's enough emotion in her chest to weigh her down to the bottom.

* * *

_Her, leaving a note in Bonnie's room, short, sweet, to the point, because Tyler is eager and ready to go. Her chest hurts because she's leaving her whole entire life behind, but she loves him enough to leave with him, so she'll do this and break the hearts of the people that care as much as she does._

_ He's waiting for her when she slips out through Bonnie's window, and he flashes her that devil-may-care smile that makes part of her soften and melt. Something in her chest-heart-area clenches, like a hand tightening around her heart, unforgiving and just like love, and she thinks that maybe she could run forever with him._

_ Screw the maybe, she thinks. Let's just _go_ already. _

_And she smiles back at him, jumps into his arms, and they run for the stupid black truck that will carry them far far away from this even stupider town with its doppelgangers and curses and fucking Original vampires. This stupid place, that turned them both inhuman and killed people and brought them together (so possibly it's worth it?) and made them run away together, broken lost happy lovers holding hands as they leave their world behind._

* * *

The teenager's voice is louder, happy and bright and reflecting all the things that Caroline used to be, and Caroline ignores her. She just fingers the bottle in her hands, hoping that maybe this happy memory won't hurt so much in a decade or two.

Right now, it's almost worse than the desperate, sad, angry, awful memories. Simply because it's so damn happy, so damn what-they-used-to-be, what-he-used-to-be-when-he-_could_-be-something.

* * *

_Tyler, enfolding her in his arms and lifting her up, making her shriek in delight at the top of the Empire State Building. People glaring at the noise, at the winter wind, at the romantic young couple, but they don't care about those people, they can't care, they are too wrapped up in love. Tyler, draping his arm over her once he's set her back down, and they are content to watch New York life. They're moving on to Chicago tomorrow, for a short weekend._

_ Chicago, where he will die in two days, and she will die a little bit (a lot) with him._

* * *

One of her favorite places, New York. Where she moved up until just a few hours ago, and all of her luggage is up above her head and she is never going back to that little apartment again if her intuition is correct.

She sometimes went up to the top of the Empire State Building and simply watched New York life below her, feeling the phantom warmth of Tyler's arm over her shoulders in the winter air. (It's summer now, or maybe autumn. She doesn't keep track anymore. What the hell, what month is it? The only dates that she remember now are: _five years ago_; _two years ago_; _four days ago_; _one eternity left_.)

* * *

_Tyler, his lips on that point between her throat and the side of her jaw, making her stir and smile in his arms, lazily, not opening her eyes. "I love you," he whispers, brushing a loose curl behind her ear, making her shiver in anticipation and lust and contentedness. "Thank you. Thank you for this."_

_ "For what?" she mumbles, stretching like a cat as her wrists pop in his embrace._

_ "For choosing me," he whispers, and then he is making her giggle and laugh and scream his name. Because damn, does Tyler Lockwood know how to turn her on and make her feel better than anyone ever has._

_ This is his last night alive, though nobody knows it. Him, leaving his scent on the pillow, where she will search for it in the next few days to come. Last week, he was laughing in Paris with her, and now there are spending their last night making love and living life utterly clueless to the fact that apparently they can still fucking _die_._

_ Damn her for not protecting him when she should've._

* * *

One of her saddest memories.

And damn would she like to try to forget it.

But then again, it's also one of the best. (So maybe never mind on that one wish.)

* * *

_Her, hand around the nameless werewolf's throat as he chokes in front of her. "What? Forgot you were mortal?" she snarls. "Forgot I could rip your heart out? Forgot you need to breathe? Forgot that you _don't_ kill one of your own _kind_?"_

_ "Please," he chokes, and the other werewolves beside them, chained and with wolfsbane forced down their throats, have wide eyes and even wider wounds, open and still bleeding. "Please, please…"_

_ "Tyler didn't beg," she says. "Forget that too?"_

_ She touches him, traces her nail down the side of his cheek slowly, and swiftly smashes him with her bare fist. He screams with pain, nose broken, cheek probably aching like hell, and lip bleeding, but he'll heal in a minute or two and she'll do it again. And again and again. For days on end. And she'll torture him, and make him cry and scream and beg mercy from this woman that he called a vampire bitch yesterday, this woman that he tried to kill, this woman whose lover he helped to kill instead._

_ She will draw out the pain and torment, make the agony she's inflicting last, make him suffer, make him hurt, make him feel the cruelty that she felt (that she _feels_), make him want to die, and then let him heal enough that he won't when she finally kills him._

_ She will make it last for seven days and seven nights before she kills him._

_ And then she'll start on the next one._

_ (It takes four months to finish, and the last one is the easiest. He's also the youngest. Only fifteen, killed his sister in a car crash last May. She'd feel sorry for him if she didn't have his blood underneath her fingernails. And if he didn't have Tyler's on his hands. And if she could feel anything anymore.)_

* * *

She flipped the switch for a couple of months on that one, until she found a picture of them in her luggage as she moved from that Chicago hotel room to an equally unattractive hotel room in Brazil. Her and Tyler, laughing and smiling at the Brooklyn Bridge, photo taken by an indulgent New Yorker native citizen, thinking, _What a cute couple. What happy young tourists. Maybe they'll buy one of my I Love New York hats. Sure, I'll take a picture of them. I wonder if I ever looked this happy._

She imagines so, anyway.

That night, as she unpacked, she found the picture and held it for a few hours, not even realizing that she was crying until it stained the edges of the photo darker white. She wiped them away and protected that photo, cherished it, put it in her box of treasured belongings. (Most of those treasures have something to do with Tyler, now.)

* * *

_Klaus, leaning up against her kitchen counter. "New York, love? Really super unoriginal."_

_ "Nice wordplay on the whole 'original,' 'Original' thing. Yes, I noticed. And yeah, well, didn't feel like being original at the moment." She hasn't for the past five years._

_ "Whatcha cooking, sweetheart?"_

_ "Blood and lasagna, and no, you can't have any. And I must say, I haven't expected you to come around. Say, ever."_

_ He smirks, as it's like the past five years haven't gone by at all, like Tyler might walk through the door again in a couple of seconds, like Damon and Elena will be talking about Stefan and Stefan will be downstairs in the boardinghouse cage and Bonnie will be muttering a location spell because she's too lazy to find Jeremy. Like a regular Saturday afternoon, with a side of Original._

_ "And _I_ must say, I certainly didn't expect you to be so bold and untouched. I would have thought losing your little pet Chihuahua would have made you into a sobbing mess."_

_ "It's been five years," she jerks away from his touch and returns to the stove, "and you don't know me anymore, asshole. You never did. You knew an impossible image of an innocent vampire. Which can never exist. And I want you to leave, Niklaus."_

_ "You're lucky I let you call me that," he says, and for a brief second his face darkens, but then it clears and it's like she can never disturb that calm cool collected outer image of his. That, or he doesn't let it show, and he's got a far better mask than she does about everything. "And I don't think I will. You should have somebody around, after such tragic news."_

_ "What 'tragic news?' " she regards him suspiciously._

_ "You hadn't heard about Elena? About what happened four days ago?" he asks curiously, knowingly, being that right little bastard that he is. Teasing her. "What a shame. I thought they wanted _everybody_ to come to the funeral. Shame, shame, shame. Even I went, though of course one of the sniveling Salvatores—or perhaps it was baby Gilbert—threw me out five minutes in. I let him, whichever one it was, though I could've killed any of them in five seconds."_

_ And she is frozen in shock, still as an untouched stone, and he just smirks and starts to casually walk away and out of her life (and god, that's good, because even if she did feel lust for him at some point she's ready to rip out his throat now)._

_ "God, girl, you really need to clean this place up," he remarks over his shoulder. "White walls are so last year."_

_ She doesn't even hear him as he says it, or as he closes the door behind him, smirking victoriously with his win tucked under his arm like a newspaper. She's just rushing for the phone, punching and stabbing in numbers she thought she'd forgotten long ago._

* * *

And now she is here and the pilot is announcing arrival. _What?_ They'd only just departed—can it really already have been an hour? She checks her watch and finds that it has been. The man beside her gives her a relieved grin and says, "Wow. Flying, huh? It's terrifying."

"Yeah," she agrees vaguely, not really listening. And no, it's not, because it's hard to be afraid of a plane crash when you'll be the one survivor. Actually, what scares her about the thought of a plane crash is the questions the reporters would ask. _How did you make it? Why are you alive? Are you even human?_

That's silly, though, she hardly ever flies anymore (Tyler loved flying, so did Elena) and the risk is minimal. She gets out her luggage and steps off the plane (no one is there to greet her, but what did she really expect) and gets a rental car and drives and drives. (Her hands are shaking. She's gripping the steering wheel too tight. Her knuckles are starting to turn white. Who gives a damn.)

She finds herself at Mystic Falls far too quickly, driving past it as the highest speed possible on these old roads she knows by heart (even after five years) as though someone will recognize her beyond the dark shadow-tainted windows of this unfamiliar car. She almost stops at Liz's house first (it hasn't been her home in a long time) but doesn't, because Liz probably doesn't even have to know about this. And that's probably for the best.

Caroline parks the rental car a mile or so from the Salvatore residence and approaches the house with a little curiosity and a lot of hesitance. What will she find? Will it be a depressed Stefan and a crazed Damon, as she expected? Perhaps the opposite? A lot can change about one person's grief in a short amount of time, this she knows. (She went from devastatingly sad to totally fucking angry in just a couple of hours, she remembers.)

Or maybe she'll just find two brothers trying to cling to whatever they have left in this miserable world full of death and no second chances and clever provoking Originals that make you want to tear your own heart out, or maybe theirs instead. Trying to hold onto each other.

(She seriously doubts that one, though.)

Gathering up what's left of her courage (since when has she had any, since the night she left with Tyler in that stupid old black truck), she goes up to the door, her duffel bag full of belongings light on her back, and marches up the stairs as lightly as possible.

Trying to be soft when everything about her is hard and broken now. (That's how she will have to be around these two grief-stricken brothers now. Soft, and comforting, and consoling, and able to handle whatever their separate sorrows throw at her. She'd better get started practicing.)

She knocks, and hears footsteps coming a moment or two later. Hears the doorknob click, watches it turn, observes the door opening. Meets the eyes of a bloodshot Stefan. He feigns a weak smile at her, opens the door wider, asks her wordlessly to come inside and help them and their troubles.

And because she'd better start practicing now, she fakes a smile back. And she comes inside.

* * *

A/N: So, STILL no Damon, which is absolutely _not_ because I can't decide how to write him all angstastic-y yet (ha ha, I'm so torn it makes me itch right now, so, any pointers? Desires? How do you want to see sad vulnerable angry Damon?). And Caroline was super angsty, I hope you noticed, because that was basically the entirety of the chapter. Caroline. Angst. And a bit of Stefan. And a minor OC or two. And damn, that was it. Let's hope I get better with content later. :)

Ummmmmm. So. Review? Comment? Question? Give me coffee? Give me sleeping aids? (I swear I don't care at this point. I can't even tell what I'm typing anymore. I. NEED. SLEEP.) Hm. So. Got anything to say?


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